A Place for Strangers and Beggarshttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/
A Place for Strangers and Beggars - LiveJournal.comFri, 26 Jun 2015 03:41:11 GMTLiveJournal / LiveJournal.comjimvanpelt11390144personalhttp://l-userpic.livejournal.com/66560804/11390144A Place for Strangers and Beggarshttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/
90100http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/465033.htmlFri, 26 Jun 2015 03:41:11 GMTTHE FUTURE IN MY HOUSEhttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/465033.html
<div data-ft="{&amp;quot;tn&amp;quot;:&amp;quot;K&amp;quot;}" style="line-height:1.38;overflow:hidden"><div style="display:inline"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 6px;">I ordered an Amazon Echo a couple of months ago, and have been using it for a week. There&#39;s lots to like about an always on, voice-activated timer, music player, alarm setter, Wikipedia and several other functions. It will even tell me jokes.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px;">Plus, I really, really like the idea that I&#39;m living in a future I imagined. If I had the right equipment, I would also be controlling my lights in the house through Echo or my phone.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px;">Here&#39;s what Echo doesn&#39;t d<span style="display: inline;">o (yet), but I think it should:</span></p><div style="display:inline"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 6px;">1. It won&#39;t let me add things to my Google calendar, although it will tell me about my upcoming events if I ask.<br />2. It won&#39;t read me poetry (I HAVE to have it read me Sara Teasdale&#39;s &quot;There Will Come Soft Rains&quot;).<br />3. It won&#39;t read me stuff from Project Gutenburg.<br />4. It won&#39;t play old time radio shows.<br />5. It won&#39;t converse.<br />6. It won&#39;t text message or send e-mails.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px;">Also, I try not to think of the possibility that I&#39;ve just effectively bugged my living room.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px;"></p></div></div></div><div><div data-ft="{&amp;quot;tn&amp;quot;:&amp;quot;H&amp;quot;}"><div style="margin-top:10px"><div data-ft="{&amp;quot;tn&amp;quot;:&amp;quot;H&amp;quot;}"><div style="zoom:1"><div style="float:left;width:486px"><div><div><div><span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00X4WHP5E/ref=ods_gw_d_s_h1_ha_jl?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_s=desktop-jeff-letter&amp;pf_rd_r=0VVBT8W5SD44DBBE15N2&amp;pf_rd_t=36701&amp;pf_rd_p=2109084642&amp;pf_rd_i=desktop" rel="nofollow" style="color: rgb(59, 89, 152); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" height="255" src="https://fbexternal-a.akamaihd.net/safe_image.php?d=AQBUSXuBpwCjAJOV&amp;w=487&amp;h=255&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fecx.images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FI%2F41%252Bjw%252Bk87yL._SS500_.jpg&amp;cfs=1&amp;upscale=1" width="487" /></a></span></div></div></div><div><div><div><span><a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB00X4WHP5E%2Fref%3Dods_gw_d_s_h1_ha_jl%3Fpf_rd_m%3DATVPDKIKX0DER%26pf_rd_s%3Ddesktop-jeff-letter%26pf_rd_r%3D0VVBT8W5SD44DBBE15N2%26pf_rd_t%3D36701%26pf_rd_p%3D2109084642%26pf_rd_i%3Ddesktop&amp;h=tAQGpJ22v&amp;s=1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Amazon Echo</a></span></div><div style="line-height:16px;max-height:80px;overflow:hidden"><span>Amazon Echo is designed around your voice. It&#39;s hands-free and always on. With seven microphones and beam-forming technology, Echo can hear you from across the room&mdash;even while music is playing. Echo is also an expertly tuned speaker that...</span></div><div><div style="overflow:hidden;text-overflow:ellipsis;white-space:nowrap;color:rgb(145, 151, 163);font-size:11px;line-height:11px;text-transform:uppercase"><span>AMAZON.COM</span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/465033.htmlelectronicslifepublic1http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/464666.htmlMon, 01 Jun 2015 14:19:00 GMTAuthority: Parting Thoughts on Retirement (a long post that does come to a point)http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/464666.html
<div style="padding-top:5px;overflow:hidden;color:rgb(68, 68, 68);font-family:verdana;font-size:13px;line-height:normal"><div dir="" style="word-wrap:break-word"><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">I&rsquo;ve&nbsp;told this story before about the staff at FMHS in 1981.&nbsp; What a fractious, contrary, opinionated lot they were.&nbsp; Quick to defend what they believed in.&nbsp; Full of their ability to make a difference.&nbsp; Convinced that their position as professionals lent their voices extra weight.&nbsp; Every policy suggestion was debated.&nbsp; Changes went before teacher committees.&nbsp; Teachers heavily influenced the school.&nbsp; Passionate voices rang out during faculty meetings.&nbsp; </p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">It was chaotic, messy and glorious.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">That&rsquo;s the way the superintendent of the district and the school board wanted it too.&nbsp; Individual schools were encouraged to behave autonomously, to come up with solutions that best fit their community&rsquo;s needs and their teaching strengths.&nbsp; Experimentation and innovation were supported.&nbsp; It was through that philosophy that the three traditional high schools in the district each came up with their own bell schedule, from the school that adopted an eight-period day on a traditional 18-week semester with forty-five minute classes; to the one that decided extended class periods would be better, so they ran a four-period day where the classes were ninety minutes long and a semester lasted nine weeks.&nbsp; FMHS, suffering from overcrowding, had to transition to a full-year schedule.&nbsp; A teacher committee investigated dozens of schedules (there were some wild ones) for the staff to decide between.&nbsp; We ended up with a five-period day, seventy-minute long classes, and four 12-week long &ldquo;mesters.&rdquo;&nbsp; Kids and teachers attended three of the four sessions.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">When the district built a facility to take our 9th graders and the overflow of 8th graders from the middle schools, we were able to go back to a traditional calendar, but the Fruita teachers liked the 12-week schedule so much that we kept it.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">One of the superintendents in those early years always said, &ldquo;Keep the main thing the main thing.&rdquo;&nbsp; The main thing, of course, was the students.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">Then things changed.&nbsp; Many teachers mark the change with No Child Left Behind, but I think it started earlier for us with the new gym.&nbsp; FMHS was built originally for 600 students.&nbsp; Over time, our population grew to 1,800.&nbsp; We could add new classrooms, but the gym was too small, so the district decided that we needed a new one, as did the other schools.&nbsp; We were told that we could have a lot of input into the design.&nbsp; You can imagine how excited the P.E. department was about this!&nbsp; They investigated gyms from all over the country before recommending the one that they thought best fit our needs.&nbsp; It even would cost less to build than the district had budgeted.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">The gym committee worked for almost an entire year to find the design.&nbsp; It was a ton of time and effort, but at the end, the district decided that all the gyms should be the same so that none of the schools would be &ldquo;jealous&rdquo; of the other school&rsquo;s gym.&nbsp; We didn&rsquo;t get the building we wanted. It wasn&rsquo;t even a design the committee considered.&nbsp; All the schools were going to get exactly the same gym.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">I don&rsquo;t know if jealousy was really the explanation.&nbsp; It could have just been a budgeting concern.&nbsp; The point is, though, that the teachers&rsquo; input was disregarded.&nbsp; Folks who were in the know said that the powers-that-be knew months earlier that they were going to ignore the committee, but they let it continue to work.&nbsp; </p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">That&rsquo;s disheartening.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">Later, we heard about No Child Left Behind.&nbsp; I remember the meeting where the teacher who had gone to the presentations about the upcoming changes presented what she&rsquo;d learned to the staff.&nbsp; She said, &ldquo;This is real. It&rsquo;s not going to go away.&rdquo; </p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">I don&rsquo;t think the staff believed her.&nbsp; Educational fads come and go.&nbsp; I&rsquo;d already taught through several of them.&nbsp; But she wasn&rsquo;t wrong.&nbsp; No Child Left Behind came, and it grew more pervasive every year.&nbsp; Instead of talking about our strengths, our innovations, and our independence, we heard more and more that our school was being run from the outside.&nbsp; No more committees to decide independently what was best for us and our kids.&nbsp; Curriculum changed to fit the mandates.&nbsp; Instruction time that used to be spent on subject-related material shifted into test preparation.&nbsp; Department meetings were devoted to strategies for keeping our test scores high.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">At the same time, the district began a move away from autonomy.&nbsp; Suddenly what was valued was consistency.&nbsp; The old idea that each high school could shape itself to best fit its community was shunted aside.&nbsp; The high schools in the district had to be on the same bell schedule, offer the same classes, and within those classes to be teaching the same things, hitting the same benchmarks on the same schedule.&nbsp; No discussion.&nbsp; In fact, the district aggressively named the new standards as &quot;Non-Negotiables.&quot;</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">For someone like me, someone who remembered when our staff fought for everything, it was depressing.&nbsp; What happened to the staff was best embodied by an administrator who faced questions about why we were giving in so easily to No Child Left Behind by saying, &ldquo;It is what it is.&rdquo;</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">&ldquo;It is what it is&rdquo; has a kind of Zen-like simplicity to it, doesn&rsquo;t it?&nbsp; At first I thought it sounded wise.&nbsp; It admitted that discussion at our level didn&rsquo;t matter.&nbsp; It told us that teacher&rsquo;s opinions, the ones that used to shape the school had become irrelevant.&nbsp; But after a while, the &ldquo;It is what it is&rdquo; mantra made me furious because it started to sound more like, &ldquo;Shut the hell up.&rdquo;</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">And that is where I&rsquo;m going with my final thoughts.&nbsp; Education in this country has changed.&nbsp; The change is not the superintendent, the school board, or the building administrator&rsquo;s fault.&nbsp; It truly did come from the outside.&nbsp; Even the principal who always said, &ldquo;It is what it is,&rdquo; was right.&nbsp; It just hurt to hear it.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">But I don&rsquo;t think &ldquo;It is what it is&rdquo; should be a teacher&rsquo;s guiding thought.&nbsp; What &ldquo;is&rdquo; doesn&rsquo;t have to stay that way.&nbsp; I think we have to remember that despite the outside forces, the real work in education happens inside the classroom between the teacher and the students.&nbsp; What &ldquo;is&rdquo; is what the teachers make of it. The professional teacher&rsquo;s opinion of what is best for students does matter, and we should speak our mind.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">I&rsquo;m not going to leave you with the old saw, &ldquo;Question Authority,&rdquo; though.&nbsp; The problem is that we are too far from Authority to question it.&nbsp; The principal has no freedom to change the mandates, neither does the school board or the superintendent.&nbsp; Even the state is powerless.&nbsp; Who can we question (there is an answer to that&mdash;go to education advocacy sites on the web if you want to see how)?</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">What I&rsquo;ll leave you with is this.&nbsp; I think our obligation is to not question Authority but to speak truth to it.&nbsp; Speak truth to Authority.&nbsp; Always do it.&nbsp; If you&rsquo;re classes are too big, tell authority.&nbsp; If school policies are taking away from your time to teach, your time to prepare, or your time to reflect, speak truth to Authority.&nbsp; Be a squeaky wheel. Advocate for what you believe is best for kids.&nbsp; Always do it.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">Here&rsquo;s the problem with a docile faculty.&nbsp; If everyone lives by the &ldquo;It is what it is&rdquo; philosophy, in no time at all Authority will assume that what is going on is fine.&nbsp; I worked for an administrator like that once who was so powerful, so intimidating, that the administrator scared people into not speaking the truth.&nbsp; After a while, the administrator would say, &ldquo;It must be a good policy.&nbsp; I haven&rsquo;t heard any objections.&rdquo;</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">For the principal of Fruita in 1981, trying to lead must have been like herding cats.&nbsp; Everyone felt the right to speak truth to authority, often times with contradictory truths.&nbsp; It was also a faculty that pulled together, that innovated its way to solutions, and that prided itself for its professionalism and independence.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">We work in perilous times.&nbsp; Teachers are assaulted on all sides.&nbsp; Maybe you like what is happening in education.&nbsp; Maybe you are a teacher that can roll with the punches, and none of this bothers you.&nbsp; If that&rsquo;s the case, teach on.&nbsp; Do the best you can despite the environment (after all, teachers have been doing this for decades).&nbsp; If you don&rsquo;t like something, though, if you think it&rsquo;s wrong for kids, then talk about it.&nbsp; Speak truth to Authority.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t put yourself in the position where someone else can say later, &ldquo;Everything must have been okay.&nbsp; There were no complaints.&rdquo;</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">I know that I always wanted to do what was best for my students.&nbsp; I also wanted to keep my job, so I tried to voice my opinion respectfully.&nbsp; I learned to make my thoughts known, and then to back off.&nbsp; I wasn&rsquo;t talking to the people who could make a direct change in the conditions.&nbsp; After I talked to them, though, they could pass that opinion on.&nbsp; My unrest was not unvoiced.&nbsp; I did what I could.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">As far as my own behavior goes, here is where I ended up.&nbsp; First, of course, was this speak truth to Authority idea.&nbsp; The second, and one that gave me comfort when I felt stuck between a rock and a hard place, was this: no teacher ever became great by following all the rules.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">Oh, and here&rsquo;s a P.S.&nbsp; Wouldn&rsquo;t it be fantastic if for an entire year of faculty meetings, the principal could announce, &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s what we&rsquo;ve done to make your job easier.&nbsp; Here&rsquo;s what is going on to support you in your efforts.&nbsp; Here&rsquo;s a list of things we&rsquo;ve taken off your plate so that you can focus more on your classrooms and your kids&rdquo;?</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">Wouldn&rsquo;t that be wonderful?</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6;">Good luck FMHS teachers and School District #51.&nbsp; I know that you are doing the best you can for kids.&nbsp; I know you care deeply, think deeply, and that you&rsquo;re impacting our students. </p></div></div></div><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;"></p>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/464666.htmlteachingpublic3http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/464392.htmlMon, 01 Jun 2015 14:17:01 GMTParents: a Neglected Resourcehttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/464392.html
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;">A couple years ago, a parent of a senior started e-mailing or calling me every week.&nbsp; She wanted to know if her son had turned in assignments and what the next week&rsquo;s work was going to be.&nbsp; I thought that was obsessive behavior for a senior&rsquo;s mom, but I answered her questions and sent her the material she asked for.&nbsp; Later, after the class ended, I talked to her about it.&nbsp; She said that she loved her son, knew he was capable, but he was a terrible procrastinator.&nbsp; He would be going to college next year, so she felt this was her last chance to be a parent and to help him develop the work habits he would have to have.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;">There was a sense of desperation in her voice that I totally understood.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;">On a related note, I have an ongoing argument about ParentVue with a friend of mine who teaches middle school math. He thinks that teachers posting their gradebook online feeds two evils: student irresponsibility and helicopter parenting.&nbsp; Since I disagree with him, I have a tough time paraphrasing his point of view.&nbsp; Basically he thinks that by the time a kid gets to middle school that he should be adult enough to take care of his own grades.&nbsp; My friend believes that the high stake nature of grades creates responsibility since if the kid fails he will pay the penalty.&nbsp; Paying the penalty is the lesson.&nbsp; ParentVue makes it harder for kids to fail so an irresponsible kid won&rsquo;t learn the important lesson by failing.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;">See, I told you I wouldn&rsquo;t be able to make his argument well.&nbsp; It sounds silly to me to even say it.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;">At the same time, ParentVue encourages too involved parents to become truly intrusive, where they call all the time, question the teacher&rsquo;s grading policy, and never give their kids a break.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;">My friend believes that the quicker we treat kids like adults by making them solely responsible for their grades and divorcing them from their parents, the quicker the kids will become adults.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;">In theory his arguments make sense.&nbsp; here&rsquo;s why I think he&rsquo;s wrong.<br />One of the best things to happen to me as a teacher was to become a parent of a school-aged child.&nbsp; Suddenly, in a very concrete way, I understood that every kid in my class was somebody&rsquo;s baby.&nbsp; When students sat in my room taking notes or reading their texts or writing essays, I saw like a ghostly presence the image of their parent or parents behind them, hoping, praying, agonizing over their child&rsquo;s fate.&nbsp; Even the kids who were doing well&mdash;or maybe most particularly the kids who were doing well&mdash;had parents who still wanted to be involved in their student&rsquo;s academic life.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;">They want to parent. I think I&rsquo;m shortsighted if I don&rsquo;t involve them.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;">My administrator friend who asked me for &ldquo;easy wins,&rdquo; the things we can do to make education better that don&rsquo;t break the bank, will appreciate this: I believe that the most underutilized force to improve high school are the parents.&nbsp; We made a stride forward with ParentVue by putting the power of the gradebook in parents&rsquo; hands.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s only a single step, though.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;">Somebody asked me once what changes I&rsquo;d seen in education during my career.&nbsp; There weren&rsquo;t many, and most of them were negative, but ParentVue was a positive.&nbsp; A concerned student or parent could query me if the kid&rsquo;s grades were going south.&nbsp; One click on an e-mail link, and we were suddenly in a dialogue.&nbsp; Parent-teacher conferences were no longer &ldquo;gotcha&rdquo; moments where a kid&rsquo;s bad grades ambushed parents whose kids had kept them in the dark.&nbsp; ParentVue gave parents a chance to be parental.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;">Here&rsquo;s the next step I would like to propose.&nbsp; In high school, there&rsquo;s a tacit conspiracy of silence toward parents.&nbsp; ParentVue exists, and an active parent will take advantage of it, but ParentVue is passive and impersonal, providing only grades without explanations.&nbsp; No nuance.&nbsp; The silence comes from the teachers.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;">A weird feature of high school (and I suspect this is true in middle school too) is that most teachers do not communicate directly with parents.&nbsp; The change I propose is that they should.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;">The quickest way to change our students&rsquo; learning, especially for struggling students, is to involve the parents.&nbsp; I know that sounds obvious, but how often does it happen?&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll bet (a lot!) that most middle school and high school teachers do not initiate even one personal parent contact a week.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;">If I were an administrator who wanted the quickest way to both improve student achievement and to raise the school&rsquo;s reputation in the community, I would require that every teacher phone (not e-mail or text) five parents a week every week of the school year.&nbsp; The calls wouldn&rsquo;t have to be to the lowest performing students, although why wouldn&rsquo;t you call the lowest achieving students&rsquo; parents?&nbsp; They could be randomly chosen.&nbsp; The call might just be the teacher telling the parent about a highlight from the student&rsquo;s week.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;">Most parents would appreciate the information and the human contact.&nbsp; Kids would be held more accountable.&nbsp; Phone calls could help to initiate an active, coordinated conspiracy of adults working in concert to help the kids.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;">Five phone calls a week.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s not a radical suggestion.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s an easy win.</p>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/464392.htmlteachingpublic2http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/464336.htmlTue, 19 May 2015 15:13:26 GMTStudents: an Evolution in Thinkinghttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/464336.html
<xml:namespace ns="livejournal" prefix="lj"><p>​I am completely, totally, and irrevocably tired of the narrative that says kids today are in some way less than the kids of yesteryear.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s a false assertion supported only by the tint of nostalgia-infused glasses.&nbsp; The core kid is not lazier, more disrespectful, or less bright than kids were from when I was in high school in the late 60s and early 70s.</p><p>We have always had dropouts, underachievers, confused loners, bullies, rebels, and the apathetic.&nbsp; Reading for fun has always been considered odd by the majority.&nbsp; In the same way, there are still overachievers, hard workers, geniuses, and the ambitious, audacious, inventive, clever, honest, humorous and idealistic kids.</p><p>I have come to wonder if the adults I talk to who argue the opposite aren&rsquo;t actually saying that they don&rsquo;t like kids: that they&rsquo;re the kids-only version of misogynists. </p><p>That&rsquo;s my starting premise.&nbsp; And even if I&rsquo;m wrong, it doesn&rsquo;t matter to my job as a teacher or my evolution in thinking about students.</p><p>Right now, this quarter, I have way more students who rock my world and make me glad to be in front of a classroom than I have students who don&rsquo;t.&nbsp; If my classes are typical, I&rsquo;m optimistic about the future or our country when I&rsquo;m sitting in a rocker at a nursing home (in about fifty years!).</p><p>I&rsquo;ve always been kid-centered, but my thinking about them has changed through time.&nbsp; My first year, I started with a tough-love attitude.&nbsp; Deadlines and discipline were important.&nbsp; Part of this may have come from my coaching background.&nbsp; My classes were like my teams.&nbsp; We set goals.&nbsp; Everyone had to work hard for the common good, and the expectation was that everyone was equally motivated.</p><p>With those attitudes in mind, I met with my students.&nbsp; Sheesh!&nbsp; In my first class, right after the starting bell, a sophomore boy called across the room, &ldquo;Hey, Alice, that sweater looks good on you. It would look better on my bedroom floor.&rdquo; In my second class, which was just called READING, I asked the kids how many of them liked to read for fun.&nbsp; I expected all the hands to shoot up.&nbsp; Two kids out of thirty raised their hand.</p><p>That began my evolution in thinking.</p><p>My initial breakthrough was that I had to adapt to conditions that I found.&nbsp; Clearly I couldn&rsquo;t teach my sophomore class as if they were all equally mature, or that reading class as if they all already loved to read.&nbsp; I trashed my lesson plans I&rsquo;d been working on for weeks and went a different direction.&nbsp; My &ldquo;adjust to the conditions on the ground&rdquo; attitude stuck with me for the rest of my career.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;ve always been at a loss when a kid tells me that they will be gone in two weeks, and can he have the assignments.&nbsp; I have to say, &ldquo;Ask me when we get there.&rdquo;&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know what the conditions might be in two weeks.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s possible that I could have totally new handouts and assignments, ones I&rsquo;d never done before, two weeks from now.</p><p>Most of my handouts, assignments and tests are ones I&rsquo;ve created myself.&nbsp; I went digital early.&nbsp; Not only does each class have hundreds of files, but each concept has numerous variations as I&rsquo;ve created different approaches. </p><p>I may be guilty of many things as a teacher, but being stuck in a rut isn&rsquo;t one of them.&nbsp; Even my first year, I was horrified by a long-time teacher who showed me her yellowed lesson plan book.&nbsp; She said, &ldquo;These are my lessons from when I started teaching, and I&rsquo;ve never changed them.&rdquo;&nbsp; She spoke with pride.&nbsp; The teacher who copied all of his handouts and tests for the year before school started equally baffled me, although I had to admit that his boxes full of class sets, organized by subject area and quarter, was impressive.</p><p>My second breakthrough came when my oldest boy turned five.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s an embarrassingly late breakthrough, since that was 1995, fourteen years after I started teaching.</p><p>I had always been annoyed by squirreliness.&nbsp; This is why I knew I couldn&rsquo;t teach in the middle school.&nbsp; It drove me crazy to watch freshmen or sophomores poking each other, grabbing each other&rsquo;s stuff, squirming around in their seats, talking when other people were talking, etc. I even made handouts defining immature behavior and went over them with classes that were particularly bad. </p><p>The problem was that I knew by the time they were seniors, for most of them, squirreliness would disappear.&nbsp; I could see the seniors in them that hadn&rsquo;t expressed themselves yet.&nbsp; When my boy turned five, though, and I had to be patient with his five-year old behavior, I suddenly realized I&rsquo;d been thinking about the younger students incorrectly.&nbsp; I shouldn&rsquo;t be mad because of the seniors they hadn&rsquo;t become; I should be patient because of the five-year olds they still carried around with them.</p><p>It was a revelation!</p><p>I learned a ton of other lessons along the way, each with their own stories.&nbsp; They include the following what should have been obvious conclusions:</p><p>&bull;&nbsp;Small-group and one-on-one interactions with students are more powerful than large-group presentations.<br />&bull;&nbsp;Sometimes large-group presentations are the way to go.<br />&bull;&nbsp;Don&rsquo;t make rules because of bad behavior that punishes kids who haven&rsquo;t behaved badly.<br />&bull;&nbsp;Don&rsquo;t point out mistakes without teaching them how to fix them.<br />&bull;&nbsp;Kids grow at uneven rates.&nbsp; You might not be the teacher to see the greatest growth with that kid.<br />&bull;&nbsp;A one-on-one conference with a student who is having problems can solve many of them, and if that doesn&rsquo;t work, a phone call home can solve many more.<br />&bull;&nbsp;Classroom culture is the teacher&rsquo;s responsibility. If the teacher is unhappy with a class, the teacher needs to take responsibility for the problem and fix it (and work on it immediately).<br />&bull;&nbsp;Give students multiple ways to demonstrate learning.<br />&bull;&nbsp;Retakes, rewrites and redos should be the norm. It&rsquo;s not, not, not important that a student demonstrate learning on the first try.&nbsp; What&rsquo;s important is that they demonstrate it on the last try.<br />&bull;&nbsp;These are high school students, not adults. That means that some of them need help learning timeliness and responsibility.&nbsp; If that&rsquo;s the lesson they need to learn, teach it.&nbsp; Their college instructors and employers will thank you later.<br />&bull;&nbsp;The gradebook is not the only place to teach timeliness and responsibility, and it&rsquo;s weak teaching if that&rsquo;s the teacher&rsquo;s only tool.<br />&bull;&nbsp;Students respond to genuine enthusiasm.</p><p>Where I arrived in my evolution of thinking about students is that they are individuals.&nbsp; I have to treat them as individuals.&nbsp; Large class size works against that.&nbsp; An eight-period day where I only see them for forty-five minutes works against that. Standardized tests that encourage me to think of kids as statistics, and that tell me what to do with this year&rsquo;s kids based on last year&rsquo;s results work against that.</p><p>I see I&rsquo;ve gone on for a while about students, as well I should.&nbsp; The pity about retiring is that my thinking about students has been evolutionary.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m still learning.&nbsp; Now that I&rsquo;m getting an inkling about kids as learners, I&rsquo;m moving on.</p><p>I know, though, that in high school I&rsquo;m a better teacher when I see the student as a person.&nbsp; Teaching is a person to person interaction.&nbsp; One of my many weaknesses as a teacher is that I&rsquo;m terrible with names. I think I would have been better if I could have always been able to greet each kid by name by the end of the first week.</p><p>I wish that when I see them on the street years later that I still know who they are.</p></xml:namespace>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/464336.htmlteachingteaching lifepublic1http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/463924.htmlTue, 19 May 2015 15:12:14 GMTTeachers: the First of Four Summative Essays on Teachinghttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/463924.html
<xml:namespace ns="livejournal" prefix="lj"><xml:namespace ns="livejournal" prefix="lj"><p>I&rsquo;ve worked with a handful of terrible teachers over the years.&nbsp; Probably the worst was a teacher who when he neared retirement gave up on teaching altogether.&nbsp; This was the time when we ordered films we were going to show for the week from the district media office. They&rsquo;d come in their big silver cans in canvas bags on Monday.&nbsp; This teacher would go to the delivery room and sort through which films other teachers were using that week that he could show.</p><p>Once, he showed FERRIS BUELLER&#39;S DAY OFF for three weeks straight in all of his classes.&nbsp; He was so bad that in his last year, the administration assigned him only study halls.&nbsp; He had a master&rsquo;s degree and over thirty years in the classroom, so he was one of the highest paid teachers in the building, and he was just supervising study halls.</p><p>By that last year, he&rsquo;d piled up so many unused substitute days that he called in sick on the first teaching day in January, and then called in sick for the rest of the year.</p><p>There&rsquo;s a really long story about how a good system to protect teachers from administrative whims ended up protecting this awful teacher long enough that he could end his teaching career that way.</p><p>He wasn&rsquo;t the only bad teacher I worked with, but I bring him up because he was so rare.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve seen so many hard-working, caring teachers over my time that I remember the bad ones vividly.&nbsp; They stand out.</p><p>Overall, my experience with teachers highlighted my career, and I so, so underutilized the opportunity I had to learn from the teachers around me.</p><p>A Facebook friend, a former administrator, said that he was interesting in hearing my list of things that can improve education without having to move a mountain.&nbsp; He called them &ldquo;easy wins.&rdquo;</p><p>An easy win for me would have been to spend even more time in other teachers&rsquo; classrooms.&nbsp; I know amazing stuff must be going on there, but I was so wrapped up in my own room that I hardly ever observed other teachers teaching.&nbsp; In the same way, I didn&rsquo;t invite other teachers in to watch me.&nbsp; What I wished I had more of was the kind of thing I get from a writers&rsquo; workshop.&nbsp; In a writers&rsquo; workshop, a group of peers gets together to review each other&rsquo;s work. The idea is that we&rsquo;re too close to our own writing to see what is going on.&nbsp; We need an outside set of ideas to see where we&rsquo;re not clear, where we misstep, where we flat out miss the boat.&nbsp; In my teaching utopia, teachers would act like a workshop.&nbsp; There would be a lot of observing and a lot of commenting.</p><p>Some people criticize writing workshops because they say they can be stifling.&nbsp; A writer might become too aware of the workshop&rsquo;s tendencies and start bending the writing to avoid criticism and attract praise, and thereby squelch the writer&rsquo;s voice.&nbsp; I think that&rsquo;s a legitimate concern, but that&rsquo;s also a bad workshop.</p><p>In a good workshop, the writers are all fans of each other&rsquo;s work. They want the writers&rsquo; stories to succeed on their own terms.&nbsp; They get what the writer is trying to do, and they offer their observations with that goal in mind.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s a cool workshop. I think that would be a cool teaching atmosphere too.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve always liked to coach and to be coached.&nbsp; I wish I&rsquo;d done more of it with other teachers.</p><p>Luckily, I did learn from extraordinary teachers, and what I learned is there are numerous ways to do this job well.&nbsp; Some of the first teachers I worked with blew me away with their competence: Patty Halloway, who could run small groups and make them shine; Linda Cates, the professional&rsquo;s professional, who not only dressed more businesslike than anyone I knew, but whose lessons were monuments of planning and clarity; Sandra Haulman, whose intelligence, intensity and passion lit classrooms on fire, and a host of others.&nbsp; My list of great, influential teachers is long.</p><p>I&rsquo;m working with some of my favorite teachers now.&nbsp; Thank you, FMHS English Department for being the eccentric, dedicated group you are.</p><p>There&rsquo;s also a small group of teachers I admired because they knew when to quit.&nbsp; Occasionally, what some teachers want to do, what they know to do is right, runs afoul of circumstances.&nbsp; I know several teachers who could not work in the current environment.&nbsp; The constraints of changing curriculum, an emphasis on testing, the vagaries of administration were too much for them.&nbsp; They walked away from teaching because they didn&rsquo;t feel like they could do the job they expected of themselves.</p><p>I didn&rsquo;t always agree with them, but I think that anyone who cares enough about doing the job right that they quit is the kind of teacher you want to hang onto.</p><p>There&rsquo;s a great scene in a Nick Nolte film called TEACHERS. An inmate of an insane asylum escapes, and through a series of unlikely events, becomes a long-term sub in a social studies class.&nbsp; The thing is, in his insanity, he&rsquo;s brilliant.&nbsp; He comes to class dressed as historical figures. He makes the kids reenact historical moments.&nbsp; His approach wakes kids up, gets them involved, leaves them talking about what they learned.&nbsp; He was awesome!</p><p>Of course, it couldn&rsquo;t last.&nbsp; The asylum catches up to him.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s teaching his class about the Battle of the Little Bighorn dressed as George Armstrong Custer.&nbsp; The doctors rush in and grab him.&nbsp; Stunned, the class watches him being lead out.&nbsp; Custer straightens in their grip.&nbsp; He says something like, &ldquo;Unhand me.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t you know who I am?&rdquo;</p><p>We all wait.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s wearing buckskin, a 7th Calvary jacket, a blond wig.&nbsp; He says, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a teacher.&rdquo;</p><p>God, I love that moment.</p></xml:namespace></xml:namespace>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/463924.htmlteachingteaching lifepublic3http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/463667.htmlSun, 17 May 2015 19:21:14 GMTENDING A CAREERhttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/463667.html
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6;">I started my career in District 51 in 1981.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Arnold Hayes was the principal, and he interviewed me during the summer.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Two elements from that forty-five minute meeting stuck in my mind: first, I was interviewing for an English position and to be the boys and girls swim coach. What struck me about that interview was that Arnold only asked me questions about coaching, mostly coaching girls.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">During the forty-five minutes, he didn&#39;t ask a single question about teaching English.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">After that, I coached the boys team for four years and the girls for six.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6;">The second memory that stuck is that for some reason I got it in my head that he was Irish.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">All the way through the interview, I called him &quot;Mr. O&#39;Hayes.&quot;</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Bonnie Noble, the secretary, corrected me as I left the office.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Still, he gave me the job.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">When he called to tell me, he asked which school publication I wanted to teach: newspaper or yearbook.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">I said, &quot;Mr. Hayes, I have no journalism classes, and I&#39;ve never been a newspaper or yearbook staff member.&quot;</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6;">He said, &quot;What&#39;s your point?&quot;</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6;">I owned a camera, so he said, &quot;Great.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">You&#39;re yearbook.&quot; </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">I did the yearbook for five years.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Later I took over the newspaper for eleven years.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6;">When I stepped into the English office my first day of school, Steve Congdon looked up from his desk and said, &quot;Where are the donuts?&quot;</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6;">&quot;What?&quot;</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6;">&quot;</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">First year teachers are supposed to bring donuts on Mondays.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">You&#39;re off to a bad start, Van Pelt.&quot;</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6;">It took me a week to figure out he was pulling my leg.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Thirty-four years of my life have been spent in the service of Fruita Monument High, my permanent teaching home.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">During that time I married twice and divorced once.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">I became the father of three boys who all graduated from FMHS.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">I started and nurtured a writing life outside of the school.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">I lived in five different houses and taught under seven principals.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">My classrooms are now sprinkled with children of students I once taught.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">I haven&#39;t seen a grandchild yet.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6;">In retirement I will​&nbsp;become the full-time writer I dreamed about being at ten when I walked through the science fiction section of our public library and saw that my book (when I wrote it) would be shelved between Jack Vance and A.E. Van Vogt.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Pretty good company.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6;">My plan is to post over the next four days what I think I&#39;ve learned about the most important parts of my teaching life: teachers, students, parents, and authority.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6;">I hope all my teaching friends have a great last week.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Once again we&#39;ve pulled off the impossible trick of handling multiple classes a day, juggling the progress of way too many students, and not only survived but thrived.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Hang in.</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;"> You&#39;re four days from wrapping up 2014-15.</span></p>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/463667.htmlteachingteaching lifepublic1http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/463533.htmlThu, 14 May 2015 01:39:27 GMTSold a Story!http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/463533.html
<span style="color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://dailysciencefiction.com/" rel="nofollow">Daily Science Fiction</a> bought my short piece, &quot;Experience Arcade.&quot; That is one of the stories I&#39;ve written as part of my story-a-week-for-a-year challenge to myself.</span>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/463533.htmlpublishingpublic2http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/463129.htmlThu, 07 May 2015 22:51:08 GMTAnthology Reprinthttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/463129.html
<span style="color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I&#39;m happy to announce that my short story, &quot;This Story Will Win a Hugo,&quot; which originally appeared in DAILY SCIENCE FICTION, will be reprinted in the FAR ORBIT - APOGEE anthology that should be out in October, 2015.</span><br /><br /><p style="margin: 0px 0px 6px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Looks like this wasn&#39;t the best year to have a story eligible for a Hugo that was entitled <a href="http://dailysciencefiction.com/…/…/the-story-will-win-a-hugo" rel="nofollow">&quot;This Story Will Win a Hugo.&quot;</a></p>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/463129.htmlpublicationawardspublishingpublic1http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/462916.htmlSun, 03 May 2015 17:44:12 GMTSad/Rabid Puppy Thoughtshttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/462916.html
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 6px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">There&#39;s been an avalanche of pixels spent on the Hugos and the Sad/Rabid Puppy turmoil. Some of the discussion is about how should we read authors whose personal views or actions seem repugnant? How do we separate the artist from the artist&#39;s work?</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Also, and more specifically, how do I read works on the Sad/Rabid Puppy slates when I&#39;m opposed to the tactics that created the slates in the first place?</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I&#39;d like to think that I just enjoy the art. Art exists on its own. But I know that&#39;s not true about myself. I have a tough time watching Mel Gibson, for example, knowing some of the stuff he&#39;s done off screen. I certainly can&#39;t listen to Bill Cosby the same way as I used to.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But I think the real proof that how I feel about the person affects how I feel about their art is how I read my friends. <a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=575653133" href="https://www.facebook.com/BrendaJCooper" style="color: rgb(59, 89, 152); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" rel="nofollow">Brenda Cooper</a> is a good example. I really enjoy Brenda&#39;s company as a smart, compassionate and funny human being. So, when I read her work, I hear her voice and I connect the work to the person I know. I&#39;m predisposed to like it. Now, when I say that Brenda tells great stories and is a fine writer, I can say that I evaluate her work without considering the person--and, in my opinion, she is a wonderful author--but you know (and I know) that I&#39;m prejudiced in her favor.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I probably have the same issue evaluating <a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=1198070109" href="https://www.facebook.com/carrie.vaughn" style="color: rgb(59, 89, 152); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" rel="nofollow">Carrie Vaughn</a>, <a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=765924091" href="https://www.facebook.com/daryl.j.gregory" style="color: rgb(59, 89, 152); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" rel="nofollow">Daryl Gregory</a>,<a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=1124679680" href="https://www.facebook.com/profoundsigh" style="color: rgb(59, 89, 152); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" rel="nofollow">Daniel Abraham</a>, <a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=548762043" href="https://www.facebook.com/TheKJA" style="color: rgb(59, 89, 152); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" rel="nofollow">Kevin J. Anderson</a>, L.E. Modesitt, Connie Willis, <a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=579876012" href="https://www.facebook.com/robertjsawyer" style="color: rgb(59, 89, 152); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" rel="nofollow">Robert J. Sawyer</a>, <a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=1051424665" href="https://www.facebook.com/ericjamesstone" style="color: rgb(59, 89, 152); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" rel="nofollow">Eric James Stone</a>, <a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=1538786809" href="https://www.facebook.com/pbacigalupi" style="color: rgb(59, 89, 152); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" rel="nofollow">Paolo Bacigalupi</a>, Barb and J.C. Hendee, Patrick Swenson, and several other friends. When I read them, I also hear their voices. My feelings about them as people come into play.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">So, it makes sense that people who I don&#39;t feel great about are harder for me to read. Sorry. That&#39;s just the way it is. I&#39;m human, and my mushy, human sentiments color my judgments. I think that it makes sense, then, that I will read the Sad/Rabid Puppy slate with tilted sentiments.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">So, here&#39;s the quandary that started this post for me: Kevin J. Anderson, and Kevin&#39;s novel, THE DARK BETWEEN THE STARS. I haven&#39;t read it yet, but I&#39;m going to. I will read all the fiction nominees before I vote, but I know my initial impulse was to vote NO AWARD for all the Sad/Rabid slate-tainted works. I think there&#39;s an obvious difference between previous years where all kinds of people recommended works they liked, like John Scalzi or George R.R. Martin or HOSTS of other people have done. I recommended works I liked too. That&#39;s a part of the glorious, noisy democracy that was Hugo voting. What happened with bloc voting the Sad/Rabid puppy slate was clearly not that.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I don&#39;t get any of the defenses of the slate based on the overall quality of the work: five John C. Wright stories? Eight Castalia House nominations? The finalist list is warped.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">So back to Kevin J. Anderson, a writer who numerous times has written work worthy of Hugo consideration, but like many authors (like most authors!), has never won one. But, and more critically for me, I know Kevin, and he has been one of my invisible mentors for my entire science fiction writing career. He and his wife, <a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=504391866" href="https://www.facebook.com/rebeccamoesta" style="color: rgb(59, 89, 152); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" rel="nofollow">Rebecca Moesta</a>, have been unfailingly kind, helpful and generous to me, starting when I first met them at MileHiCon in 1996 or 97, and ever since. Kevin edited one of the most enjoyable anthologies I own, GLOBAL DISPATCHES, and he&#39;s consistently produced fiction that I&#39;ve enjoyed.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px 0px; display: inline; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">So, Kevin is my quandary, and he&#39;s why I will not reflexively vote NO AWARD for the Sad/Rabid Puppy nominees. As I said, I&#39;m going to read them because although there&#39;s a philosophical statement to be made for voting NO AWARD, and I&#39;m sorely tempted, the finalists are not abstractions. They&#39;re writers, some who had no clue of what the slates were going to mean. They&#39;re people, and it would be the worst sort of prejudice on my part to treat them as a uniform whole and vote against them because I&#39;m mad at the slates.</p>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/462916.htmlconventionspublishingpublic2http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/462761.htmlSun, 26 Apr 2015 05:03:55 GMTPandora's Gun Cover Revealhttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/462761.html
On my want list is a wall with the covers of my books, beautifully framed. &nbsp;I&#39;d have to keep it in a dark part of the house where people didn&#39;t go because it would look somewhat like a wall of self portraits and be just as self indulgent (at least it would feel that way to me), but it would be a place where I could go some times if I was feeling like I hadn&#39;t made any progress, or that life hadn&#39;t been treating me well.<br /><br />Or, I could want them because I&#39;ve been lucky to have beautiful covers on my books. I mean really, really lucky. &nbsp;Awesome lucky. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/James-Van-Pelt/e/B003DR5URK/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1430024369&amp;sr=8-1" rel="nofollow">You can see the current covers here</a>.<br /><br />And then there is this new one, <a href="http://www.fairwoodpress.com/catalog/item/7652151/10176668.htm" rel="nofollow"><i>Pandora&#39;s Gun</i></a>. &nbsp;I want the art in a three-by-four foot frame. &nbsp;Maybe with a craftily placed spotlight on it. It will be available at WorldCon in August.<br /><br />The image is a wrap-a-round, so it&#39;s twice as wide as you see here, with gobs of interesting details.<br /><br /><img alt="" src="http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/jimvanpelt/11390144/195439/195439_300.jpg" title="" />http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/462761.htmlwritingpublishingpublic0http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/462440.htmlMon, 13 Apr 2015 22:35:16 GMTWHAT ARE THE HUGOS GOOD FOR?http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/462440.html
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 6px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A reader on my Facebook page commented with &quot;What are the Hugos good for?&quot; to an earlier post of mine, where I reposted a <a href="http://www.kathryncramer.com/kathryn_cramer/2008/08/a-few-eople-who.html" rel="nofollow">Katherine Cramer article about all the good writers who hadn&#39;t won the award</a>.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I think the easy answer is &quot;not much,&quot; but the Hugo winners I&#39;ve talked to have told me that there actually are numerous benefits to winning one, besides the obvious sales bump to the work (albeit a small one in most cases). This bump is pretty much limited to novel Hugos, by the way, since the best a short story writer could hope for would be reprint sales on the winning story, or maybe being able to leverage the short work Hugo into a short story collection. Either way, not much economic benefit for most of the shorter work Hugo winners.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I suspect that Hugo name recognition is a real thing too. It&#39;s the ultimate cover letter factoid which wouldn&#39;t even need to be mentioned. Not that being a Hugo winner means that the new story is any good.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I have had reported to me career perks to winning a Hugo, like guest of honor possibilities at conventions, the possibility of some paying speaking gigs, and a greater demand for the winner&#39;s work (although Hugo winners still have stories rejected too).</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">To me, though, the real benefit is to the writer&#39;s pride or sense of self worth. There&#39;s something very, very cool about winning an award. In the case of the Hugo, I think there is a genuine cachet to it. Certainly, if it is true that just being nominated is an honor (and it is), winning one must be a bigger one. A Hugo winner is forever a Hugo winner. The phrase &quot;Hugo winner&quot; will always be attached to the writer. It will be a part of introductions, and it becomes permanent in the biography. It&#39;s sort of like getting into the Baseball Hall of Fame.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">To my thinking, the Nebula carries the same weight. Some people disagree with me on this.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">For most writers, writing will never pay the bills or financially change their life style. The Hugo is a tangible award that says &quot;for this one year, the WorldCon voters liked your work best.&quot; And that&#39;s a cool thing.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The award won&#39;t make the writer any better. It won&#39;t give them a leg up on creativity, and it will quickly gather dust somewhere. But still, it feels wonderful to win. It gives a writer a special pat on the back for the effort. And even though many more writers (and in some cases, different writers), deserved the award and didn&#39;t get it, at least some writers did.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And I think that&#39;s awesome.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">For me, the Hugo is the equivalent of Teacher of the Year. The Teacher of the Year award is part popularity, politics and service. It comes with no money or promotion, but it does pick one teacher to highlight. There were many other teachers that year who also worked hard and were deserving. Hopefully they will get their chance in another year, and it&#39;s entirely possible that they will finish their career without the award. They weren&#39;t teaching to win it in the first place. The good work is really the best reward. The Teacher of the Year recognition is just a bit of special icing.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">For readers, the Hugo award can serve as a guide to reading, but not an infallible one. There have been numerous years where I hoped a different title than the winner would have taken the rocket (how in the world did<a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=765924091" href="https://www.facebook.com/daryl.j.gregory" style="color: rgb(59, 89, 152); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" rel="nofollow">Daryl Gregory</a>&#39;s &quot;Second Person, Present Tense&quot; not win a Hugo?). I don&#39;t think a reading fan would go terribly wrong reading the Hugo winners, though, and there have been amazing pieces that have also taken the prize.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">From the reading standpoint, the Hugos mostly point me toward authors. It gives me a shortcut to find recommended works. I get the same boost from the various Year&#39;s Best collections.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px 0px; display: inline; color: rgb(20, 24, 35); font-family: helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, sans-serif; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">So, all in all, that&#39;s what I think a Hugo is worth.</p>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/462440.htmlwritingawardspublic0http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/462268.htmlSat, 11 Apr 2015 22:47:36 GMTNovel Sale!http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/462268.html
<div data-ft="{&amp;quot;tn&amp;quot;:&amp;quot;K&amp;quot;}" style="line-height:1.38;overflow:hidden;color:rgb(20, 24, 35);font-family:helvetica, arial, &amp;quot"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 6px;">My YA novel, PANDORA&#39;S GUN will debut at WorldCon in Spokane this August.&nbsp; <a data-gt="{&amp;quot;entity_id&amp;quot;:&amp;quot;252683928333&amp;quot;,&amp;quot;entity_path&amp;quot;:&amp;quot;\/profile_book.php&amp;quot;}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/page.php?id=252683928333" href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fairwood-Press/252683928333" style="color: rgb(59, 89, 152); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" rel="nofollow">Fairwood Press</a>, who has done my other books, will be doing this as well. It will be their first foray into the YA market. Yay! I&#39;m ecstatic. </p><p style="margin: 6px 0px;">More news as it becomes available.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px 0px; display: inline;">In the meantime, story #6 is coming along more slowly than the first five stories. I don&#39;t know that I&#39;ll make an end of it today. If it finishes tomorrow, than that would push the editing into story #7&#39;s time. I can mix composing and editing, though, so not a problem.</p></div><div><p style="margin: 6px 0px 0px; display: inline;"></p></div><div style="color:rgb(20, 24, 35);font-family:helvetica, arial, &amp;quot;font-size:12px;line-height:16px"><div data-ft="{&amp;quot;tn&amp;quot;:&amp;quot;H&amp;quot;}"><div style="margin-top:10px"></div></div></div>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/462268.htmlwritingpublishingpublic3http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/461919.htmlMon, 02 Mar 2015 02:48:36 GMTGetting Ideas: Lecture Noteshttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/461919.html
My presentation at the Rain Forest Writers&#39;s Retreat this year was on getting ideas. This is an intimidating subject on a couple of levels because it&#39;s really a topic that you might present to beginning writers (the Rain Forest crew had a ton of non-beginners), and because I can&#39;t really answer the question. &nbsp;Nonetheless, here are my lecture notes for the presentation. &nbsp;When I have too much time to prepare for a presentation, my notes begin to look like an essay.<br /><br />So, because several people asked, here are the notes:<br /> <br />I.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>No matter what I say today, idea generation is still, basically a mystery</b>.&nbsp; Peter Elbow made a similar point when he tried to explain what learning how to write was like. He said, imagine a world where the people are trying to touch the ground, but for some reason they&rsquo;ve come to believe that the only way to get to the ground was to reach higher.&nbsp; They&rsquo;re walking around with their hands in the air, bemoaning the fact that they can&rsquo;t touch the ground.&nbsp; Some people, though, can touch the ground, they just have a hard time teaching other people to do it, so they try tricks, like telling the people to tie their shoes, and while they&rsquo;re down there to wave their hands around. This works, but the folks who do it also have a tough time explaining how they did it since the idea that the ground can only be reached by straining upward is intrinsically ingrained in everyone. Getting ideas is like that. People get them all the time, but they don&rsquo;t have a way to tell anyone else how to do it, and when they get right down to it, they might be able to tell you when and where they got the idea, and what they were doing when they got it, but the actual mechanics of why an idea appeared in their head is still unknown. One moment there was nothing, and the next there was an idea, just like that.<br />II.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>Almost all anecdotal evidence on how authors get ideas is interesting but impractical</b>. I work with an English teacher who is also a poet. He talks to his classes about inspiration. One of his favorite stories is that he was hiking one day and he saw a solitary crow on a power line. He said that image stuck with him and became the basis of his favorite poem. Of what use is that story to a student? He could take his whole class out to see a crow on a power line, and not one of them would get an idea.<br /><b>III.</b><b>On the other hand, I knew another English teacher who would take his English class out to the canyons to watch him dive off a cliff with a hang glider.&nbsp; They all seemed to find plenty to write about.</b><br />IV.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>Annie Dillard says that her best writing environment is the one that is most unstimulating.</b> She likes a room with no view. What does seem common is that writers often do best in an unfamiliar environment.&nbsp; I&rsquo;d read that meant that for some men, they write best at home, and for some women, they write best anywhere but home. The call of the house is too loud for some, evidently.<br />V.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>I read an interesting book called DAILY RITUALS</b>, by Mason Currey, which was about the working habits of 161 artists, composers, and authors.&nbsp; What I thought was interesting was how many of them incorporated long walks into their day. That was probably the most common behavior between them (followed closely by lots of coffee).<br /><b>VI.</b><b>So, what I&rsquo;m going to talk about will be in many ways the equivalent of trying to get you to touch the ground by misdirection. We won&rsquo;t be trying to touch the ground: instead we&rsquo;ll do something else and occasionally run into the ground, more or less by accident.</b><br /><b>VII.</b><b>Freewriting</b>: This is stream of consciousness writing championed by Peter Elbow in WRITING WITHOUT TEACHERS. The idea is that the act of writing will produce ideas faster and more reliably than the act of being paralyzed in front of your keyboard waiting for an idea.&nbsp; Freewriting is timed writing (say 10 minutes). You can write with no prompt, or you can start with your reaction to a quote or thought from someone else. I think it&rsquo;s productive to look at the summary of a plot on the back of a book, and then use that as my starting point.&nbsp; Freewriting means idea production at the keyboard through active effort. This activity can be used at any time in the writing process, where you may be trying to figure out things about your character&rsquo;s motivation, or you are wondering what is supposed to happen next.&nbsp; Stop at the stuck point, open your notebook or another document, and do the freewriting.<br /><b>VIII.</b><b>Use writing prompts</b>. The web is filled with them. Do a search for &ldquo;writing prompts.&rdquo; You can even narrow your search to &ldquo;science fiction writing prompts,&rdquo; &ldquo;fantasy writing prompts,&rdquo; or &ldquo;horror writing prompts. Bruce Holland Rogers wrote his brilliant short story, &ldquo;The Dead Boy at Your Window,&rdquo; because he was responding to a writing prompt in a workshop, which was, &ldquo;Begin a story with a lie.&rdquo; He won both the Pushcart Prize and the Bram Stoker Horror Award for that story.<br /><b>IX.</b><b>Writing exercises</b>: a random first line generator, like <a href="http://writingexercises.co.uk/firstlinegenerator.php" rel="nofollow">http://writingexercises.co.uk/firstlinegenerator.php</a> will give you a first line like, &ldquo;As the policeman pulled back the sheet, she knew immediately that . . .&rdquo; or &ldquo;The victim had tried to write something as he was dying.&rdquo;<br /><b>X.</b><b>Co-writing</b>. Sometimes two heads are better than one. It&rsquo;s an interesting exercise to work on a piece with another writer. Brainstorming and the inevitably different approach your partner takes will produce new thinking.<br />XI.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>Without know how ideas come, many people talk about the</b> <b>conditions where ideas seem to come to them</b>.&nbsp; One is while doing any activity that requires them to be awake, but doesn&rsquo;t require much thought. It needs to be an activity where the mind can wander.&nbsp; This list includes:<br />a.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Long drives<br />b.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Mowing the lawn<br />c.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Washing dishes<br />d.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Jogging, walking or biking<br />e.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Taking a shower<br />f.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Painting the house or a fence<br />g.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Knitting or sewing<br />h.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Proctoring a test<br />i.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Preparing a meal<br />j.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Gardening<br />k.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Raking leaves<br />XII.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>The other activity where people frequently report getting ideas is where their brain has had a chance to disengage from the busy world</b>.<br />a.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Going to sleep<br />b.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Dreaming<br />c.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Waking up but staying in that drowsy, free associative state<br />d.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Drinking/drugs (not recommended)<br />e.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sickness (particularly if they&rsquo;re bedridden)<br /><b>XIII.</b><b>It is possible to actively provoke ideas, or at least put yourself in an idea-rich environment. These are activities that creative writing teachers will use:</b><br />a.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; One of my favorite memories of being in an English class was my junior year when the teacher had told us that our next assignment was going to be a short story. When we came to class the next day, she&rsquo;d covered the walls with photographs from magazines, and art prints.&nbsp; All four walls were covered.&nbsp; There were hundreds of images.&nbsp; She told us to walk around the room, studying the prints, and then when one &ldquo;spoke to us,&rdquo; to write the story that the print suggested.&nbsp; This was basically the same prompt as the the VISUAL JOURNEYS anthology in 2007, where the authors were given a set of science fiction art to choose from to write a story to, or the 2003 anthology, IMAGINATION FULLY DIALATED featuring the artwork of Alan M. Clark that operated on the same principle.<br />b.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; So, go to an art museum.<br />c.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Listen to moody music with the lights low.<br />d.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Go on a long, solitary hike, especially in a strange place or at an unusual time (like 3:00 am).<br />e.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sit on the beach or by a stream (moving water seems to be very inspirational)<br />f.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Watch a fire<br />XIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When I assign a short story to my Science Fiction class, I&rsquo;m dealing with an audience who didn&rsquo;t necessarily sign up for writing a story. It is a lit class, after all. So when I give them the assignment, bunches of them are at a loss for coming up with an idea. To help them, I give them the &ldquo;What If&rdquo; sheet.&nbsp; <b>Show them the What If sheet.</b><br />XV.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>Ideas do not come full blown. They develop as the story is written</b><br />XVI.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>Where to you get ideas? How would you answer the question from a sincere, beginning writer who would really like some help?</b>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/461919.htmlteachingwritingpublic3http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/461669.htmlFri, 30 Jan 2015 17:00:33 GMTKIDS ARE BRILLIANThttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/461669.html
<xml:namespace ns="livejournal" prefix="lj">My Science Fiction kids did their own version of WAR OF THE WORLDS, like the Kevin J. Anderson GLOBAL DISPATCHES anthology, as if <img alt="warotw" height="300" src="http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/jimvanpelt/11390144/195141/195141_300.jpg" style="margin: 10px; float: right;" title="warotw" width="182" />they were witnesses to&nbsp;the H.G. Wells&nbsp;Martian invasion&nbsp;happening today. The assignment is a preliminary foray into writing narrative, which is what they will be doing later. So, the paper is short (only 500 words) and what I&rsquo;m looking for are appeals to the senses and emotional reaction. But some of the kids do so much more! Some <span>...</span><span>of them are fun and inventive. I can see the developing story-tellers and wordsmiths.</span><div><div><p>So, to debrief the assignment, I took what I thought were the best sentences from each of the essays and put them on a PowerPoint. This is great to do in a class. Students respond very strongly to seeing their own work published (I try to use their writing in class as much as possible).</p><p>One of my favorite opening sentences was from a student who told the story as if she was dealing with survivor&rsquo;s guilt. Her sentence was &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t rightly know how I got here. I&rsquo;m not sure, after all, that I really belong in this aftermath.&rdquo;</p><p>Isn&rsquo;t that beautiful?</p><p>Here&rsquo;s a couple of others:</p><p>&bull; &ldquo;I decided to hide. I found a path to the sewer systems below my town. Surprisingly, It didn&rsquo;t smell badly as the bacteria died from the radioactivity and stopped producing gasses and breaking down materials. The rats were dead as well &ndash; small animals and small organisms alike. I trudged through the sewer waiting for hope, waiting for something to allow me to continue with life.&rdquo;</p><p>&bull; &ldquo;This attack almost seemed like a holy cleansing; it almost seemed like god himself was trying to destroy the earth and end all of mankind.&rdquo;</p><p>My second favorite passage was from a student who thought of the practical results of surviving a Martian invasion. How would life go on? I&rsquo;m afraid that I agree with her. This probably is what would happen:</p><p>&bull; &ldquo;As you can tell, living through a Martian invasion is very impactful, and instead of lockdowns at our school, we now have Martian invasion bunkers and drills every two weeks.&rdquo;</p></div></div></xml:namespace>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/461669.htmlteachingwritingpublic0http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/461555.htmlSat, 24 Jan 2015 19:25:28 GMTBad Advice for Writershttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/461555.html
In October at MileHiCon, I was on a &quot;Bad Advice to Writers&quot; panel. My habit when I&#39;m on a panel is to do some prep ahead of time (I hate to look like one of those panelists who clearly have NOT given the topic any thought). Sometimes there&#39;s a lot of prep; sometimes prep just means getting away from everyone for a bit so I can organize my thoughts.&nbsp; The bad advice panel was like that. The tough part of the panel is that it was all supposed to be tongue in cheek, like everyone on the panel was giving the bad advice sincerely. It was surreal.<br /><br />I was going through my messenger bag and I found my notes.&nbsp; Here&#39;s my list of bad advice to writers:<br /><ul><br /><li>- Try self publishing.&nbsp; You save time and Amazon exposes you to millions of readers.</li><br /><li>- Give up your day job.</li><br /><li>- Don&#39;t edit. You&#39;re too close to it, so you should let editors who are paid for this work do it.</li><br /><li>- Don&#39;t start a project until you have a complete story in your head.&nbsp; After all, you wouldn&#39;t go on a road trip without having already planned your route.</li><br /><li>- Editors respond to bribes, threats, sexual favors and appeals to sympathy. Choose the strategy that works best for you and use it in your cover letter.</li><br /><li>- Take long breaks from writing. Only write when you feel totally inspired.</li><br /><li>- If you ask for feedback on your writing, like from a writers&#39; group, be prepared to defend yourself against criticism. Any negative comment about your story should be refuted immediately.</li><br /><li>- Use lots of linking verbs. Everyone is familiar with them and feel comfortable with them.</li><br /><li>- Try to make your characters look and sound like popular television and movie characters.</li><br /><li>- Use lots of familiar phrases in your writing, like &quot;She trembled like a leaf,&quot; &quot;He was a true straight arrow,&quot; and &quot;Never give up, never surrender.&quot;</li><br /><li>- Hang out with other writers who don&#39;t write. Have weekly meetings to talk about what you might write about in the future.</li><br /><li>- Ideas are the true gold in publishing. The rest is just typing. Chat up your favorite authors with your ideas and an offer to split profits if they&#39;ll do the typing.</li><br /></ul>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/461555.htmlwritingconventionspublic5http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/461177.htmlWed, 26 Nov 2014 20:17:30 GMTMr. Fitzhttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/461177.html
Over the last few months I have occasionally followed links on my timeline to the &quot;Mr. Fitz&quot; cartoon strip, which is an online cartoon about a middle-school English teacher,which is drawn by a Florida, middle-school English teacher.&nbsp; Many of them I found to be funny, and when they weren&#39;t funny it was because they were depressingly accurate about what teachers face in our increasingly standards-based, high-stakes testing environment.&nbsp; Today I discovered that he also has a blog that includes his thinking about the cartoons.<br /><br />I think I have a new teacher hero.<br /><br />His latest post,<a href="http://realmrfitz.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow"> &quot;Teaching: a love/hate letter,&quot;</a> struck home.<br /><br />&nbsp;http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/461177.htmlteachingpublic0http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/460956.htmlWed, 26 Nov 2014 00:06:30 GMTTHE WEIRD TRIUMVERATE OF TEACHING MOVIES:http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/460956.html
<p><img alt="class of 84" height="273" src="http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/jimvanpelt/11390144/194851/194851_300.jpg" style="margin: 5px; float: right;" title="class of 84" width="185" />The beginning of my teaching years were marked by three movies that oddly shaped my attitude about school and kids: ANIMAL HOUSE (1978), CLASS OF 1984 (1982), and RISKY BUSINESS (1983). I think I responded to ANIMAL HOUSE and RISKY BUSINESS because they reminded me that being a kid meant not knowing who you are. I know that puts a lot of weight on two light-weight movies, but that&#39;s what I was left thinking about afterwards. Tom Crui<span>se&#39;s Joel Goodson (did you catch the last name there?) is caught between a fear that he will become his parents, and a fear that he will become something unknown. This seems similar to Larry Kroger and Kent Dorfman who are caught between childhood and something else, and living within their own rules or someone elses.</span></p><div><p>And then there&#39;s CLASS OF 1984, which is one of the meanest, stone-cold depictions of delinquency on film, and that&#39;s saying a lot since I have CLOCKWORK ORANGE in my memory mix. CLASS OF 1984 scared the beans out of me. I was still in my first year of teaching when it came out. Thank goodness I&#39;ve never run into the level of sadism that this film portrayed.</p><p>Fortunately, later in the decade I cleansed my palate with Nick Nolte&#39;s TEACHERS (1984), and then totally rinsed the taste away with DEAD POETS SOCIETY (1989).</p></div>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/460956.htmlteachingpublic0http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/460783.htmlThu, 30 Oct 2014 16:41:14 GMTWhat Kind of Composition Teacher Are You?http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/460783.html
<xml:namespace ns="livejournal" prefix="lj">Yesterday I went to an afternoon discussion of our Early Scholar program for the high school. This is where high school teachers teach some of the freshmen classes from Colorado Mesa University. I teach English 111, which is the first semester of freshmen composition.<p>What I thought was interesting about yesterday&rsquo;s session is that our presenter briefly touched upon a division in the university&rsquo;s English composition teachers. Some of them, he said, are &ldquo;expressivists.&quot;</p><p>Expressivists are the teachers who emphasizes writing as a way to discover and express thought. They do a lot of exploratory kind of writing in class. The classes emphasize student choice in topic and expression. There&rsquo;s more &ldquo;creative&rdquo; writing in class.</p><p>On the other side of the divide are the &ldquo;formivists&rdquo; or &ldquo;formvists&rdquo; (I&rsquo;m not sure how to label them&mdash;we didn&rsquo;t talk about them much or even name them). They teach freshmen composition by emphasizing the kinds of papers the students will write: five-paragraph, personal response, comparison-contrast, definition, cause and effect, formal research, etc.</p><p>You would think that there would be a nice middle ground where the expressivists and the formivists could meet, since one approach emphasizes the creation of thought while the other emphasizes the form of the creation, but it seems they don&rsquo;t. The expressivists have their students brainstorming, journaling, free writing and paying attention to sound, rhythm and word choice, while the formivists have their students reading and analyzing model essays, imitating master writers, studying grammar, and then moving through a series of assignments that hit the essay form highlights.</p><p>The formivists, by the way, often complain that their students lack originality in thought and expression while at the same time being horrified by the lack of rigor in the expressionists&rsquo; classes. The expressivists have a tendency to see the formivists as paint-by-number, rule followers who kill student enthusiasm and stunt student growth.</p><p>I&rsquo;ve noticed the divide before, but I&rsquo;d never looked at the two approaches quite this way.</p><p>I hope that I hit the middle ground. I spend a great deal of time in class looking at examples of awesome writing, and then deconstructing the process that produces that writing. In my class, we see the form (like a comparison-contrast essay), but we work on what kind of preliminary thinking/writing/exploration can fill that form with interesting content that the student had to grow to produce. I teach grammar and structure while also having the students free write and do exploratory stabs at the topic before writing the final paper.</p><p>It&rsquo;s a tough tightrope because in the &ldquo;real&rdquo; world, no one sets out to write a comparison-contrast paper. They have a thought and an urge to speak, and occasionally the comparison-contrast approach is the best one to use. The form arises organically out of the necessity of the topic. In the classroom, though, we do the opposite: we demand that the form is the goal and that we find a topic to fit it. That&rsquo;s backasswards, but there&rsquo;s not much we can do about it. The classroom is a place where we can practice technique and familiarize ourselves with forms so that when we have a genuine need for expression we know how to make some of the required moves.</p><p>By taking the middle ground, I manage to piss off both ends of the composition teacher chasm. The formivists wonder why I spend any time freewriting and talking about where student thinking comes from, while the expressivists can&rsquo;t believe I teach grammar directly.</p><p>Sigh.</p></xml:namespace>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/460783.htmlteachingpublic1http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/460314.htmlWed, 22 Oct 2014 19:55:06 GMTMileHiCon Schedulehttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/460314.html
My yearly pilgrimage to Denver for MileHi starts on Friday. I&#39;m the toastmaster next year, so, besides hanging out with friends, family, fans and writers (there&#39;s crossover in those categories), I&#39;ll also be watching Jeanne Stein, who is this year&#39;s toastmaster.<br /><br />Friday, 6:00 pm, Unca Mike&#39;s Bad Advice with C. Berg, EJ Stone, M. Swanwick (M), J. Van Pelt and C. Willis.&nbsp; &quot;C. Willis,&quot; for those who don&#39;t know, is the incomparable Connie Willis.&nbsp; This is a high powered panel!<br /><br />Friday, 8:00 pm, Autograph Alley in the Atrium with all the authors who are signing.<br /><br />Friday, 9:00 pm, Short Story Sampler,Vol. 2:Discussion &amp; Readings with R. Seagren, EJ Stone (M), and J. Van Pelt<br /><br />Saturday, noon, Lasting Appeal of The Time Machine/Time Travel Stories M. DesJardin, A. Mayer (M), D. Riley, EJ Stone, and J. Van Pelt<br /><br />Sunday, 1:00 pm, Ask the Authors with J. Heller, R. Owens (M),M. Rotundo, J. Van Pelt, and P. Wacks<br /><br />Sunday, 4:00 pm, Suspension of Disbelief with H. Bell, G. Jonas,R. Owens (M), J. Stith, and&nbsp; J. Van Pelt﻿<br /><br /><a href="http://www.milehicon.org/Default.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.milehicon.org/Default.aspx</a>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/460314.htmlconventionspublic1http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/460077.htmlFri, 10 Oct 2014 21:29:29 GMTCROSS COUNTRY AND AN ERA ENDShttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/460077.html
<p>Yesterday I went to Teague&#39;s final cross country meet. Teague is my youngest son and a senior in high school. A wave of melancholy swept over me as he was running. I&#39;ve had sons on the FMHS cross country team for the last eleven years, and now they are done. I&#39;ll never have the same relationship with the team (and it&#39;s another harbinger of age).</p><p>It has been an awesome ride, though, watching the three of them run for four years each. They worke<span>d so hard and accomplished so much personally. I&#39;ve always argued that cross country is the hardest sport to do. Of course, I&#39;m prejudiced, but it&#39;s difficult to make an argument that other sports are MORE demanding physically than the coach pointing to some spot on the horizon and saying, &quot;Run there, and then run back. Shouldn&#39;t take you more than a couple of hours.&quot;</span></p><div><p>What I liked best about FMHS cross country was that it has always been an inclusive, welcoming group. A lot of that is on the coaches who fostered that attitude. Many high schools can barely field enough kids to fill the seven varsity spots they get at a meet (remember how hard I said this sport was?), but Fruita has always had huge squads. I think that came from the coaches making it a fun, important place for the kids to be. Of course, the kids and their attitudes make the team, but a lot of their behavior came from coaches who encouraged an inclusive approach.</p><p>Thanks coaches! The FMHS cross country team has continuously been one of the best arguments for high school athletics I&#39;ve seen.</p></div><img alt="Cross Dylan" src="http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/jimvanpelt/11390144/194121/194121_300.jpg" title="Cross Dylan" /><img alt="Cross Sam" src="http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/jimvanpelt/11390144/194615/194615_300.jpg" title="Cross Sam" /><br /><img alt="DSCN6822" src="http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/jimvanpelt/11390144/194471/194471_300.jpg" title="DSCN6822" />http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/460077.htmllifepublic0http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/459957.htmlMon, 06 Oct 2014 14:30:34 GMTStory Sale!http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/459957.html
<i>Daily Science Fiction</i> bought my short, &quot;Everything&#39;s Unlikely.&quot;&nbsp; Hooray!http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/459957.htmlpublic2http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/459762.htmlSun, 21 Sep 2014 19:08:26 GMTMarketing Your First Novelhttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/459762.html
<span style="color: rgb(55, 64, 78); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I received an e-mail from an ex-student tonight. He was in my science fiction class eight years ago, and he told me that he took the short story that I&#39;d thought highly of then and turned it into a novel. But h</span><span style="display: inline; color: rgb(55, 64, 78); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">e doesn&#39;t know what to do now with it. He wondered if I had advice on finding an agent.<br /><br />Here&#39;s what I wrote to him:<br /><br />Congrats on finishing the novel!<br /><br />I do not have an agent because I was approached directly by the publisher for my first book. He talked to me because he was also the editor of a magazine that published some of my short stories. He wondered if I had ever considered putting them together into a collection. He did my first collection and the three that followed.<br /><br /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One day, over lunch at a convention, he asked me if I had written any longer works, so I told him about my novel that I had shopped around to most of the English speaking publishing world without success. He asked if he could see it, so I gave it to him, he liked it and published it also (I&#39;ve made more money on the book going with Fairwood Press, a print-on-demand publisher than I would have made in an advance from one of the major publishers).</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">So I skipped the whole agent thing.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That said, I think you are right to look for representation. In general, you have much better chance of selling a novel through an agent than on selling it by sending it directly to a publisher (although some books are sold that way too).</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Publishers like working with agents because agents only represent books that they think are salable. The agent serves as kind of a first reader for the publisher, winnowing out the unpublishable stuff.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I highly recommend that you read this article from A.C. Crispin at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association website: </span><a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfwa.org%2Freal%2F&amp;h=zAQGiPqCH&amp;s=1" rel="nofollow" style="color: rgb(59, 89, 152); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.sfwa.org/real/</a><br /><br /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">You can learn a ton that way.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">You can find out a bunch more about publishers by visiting </span><a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fralan.com%2Fm.publish.htm&amp;h=xAQFeXuwV&amp;s=1" rel="nofollow" style="color: rgb(59, 89, 152); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://ralan.com/m.publish.htm</a> <br /><br /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Ralan is amazing. He compiles lists of publishers for both short and book-length science fiction, fantasy and horror. Evidently he has no life beyond this project that he&#39;s been doing for years. I&#39;ve met him. He&#39;s a true treasure to working sf/f/h writers everywhere.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">For my first novel, I tried sending it as an unsolicited manuscript to a bunch of publishers. Some never replied. Some said they weren&#39;t interested. Some asked to see the first couple of chapters and a synopsis; and some asked to see the whole manuscript. They all, eventually, said no. When it occurred to me that maybe an agent could do the job more efficiently, I had already poisoned the water with a bunch of publishers by submitting it to them myself. It turns out that many publishers won&#39;t look at a manuscript a second time. Whoever rejected my novel at each of the publishers was the lowest member of their company--quite possibly an intern who was willing to read the slush as a way to get started. A good agent would know which acquiring editor at the publishing house would be the right reader for my project. An agent only makes money if my manuscript sells, so she/he has an interest in finding the manuscript a home.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That only works, though, if the agent likes your manuscript. So, read the SFWA article, follow its suggestions, make a list of possible agents, and send off your queries.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Also, if you are interested in a longer career than just one book, I&#39;d highly recommend going to science fiction/fantasy conventions. Agents, editors, publishers and other writers attend. I&#39;ve made many helpful connections with the publishing world by meeting up with other people in the industry at a convention. Your first book will probably be your worst book (you are planning on getting better at writing, right?), so the people you meet while learning about this book might be very helpful in the future.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One more thing, Harlan Ellison, a writing icon (or iconclast--it depends on who you talk to) has a mantra for writers. It&#39;s worth repeating as you enter the potentially predatory world of first publishing: &quot;The natural flow of money is TOWARD the writer.&quot; Say that to yourself twenty times in a row or how many times it takes you to pound it home. That way when someone says they&#39;ll read your book for a fee, or offers to &quot;doctor&quot; the book for money, or tells you that they&#39;d be happy to publish it if you would help defray the costs, then you&#39;ll know its time to run away.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Good luck!</span></span>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/459762.htmlpublicationpublishingpublic0http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/459293.htmlSun, 21 Sep 2014 19:03:14 GMTWe Should Be Immortalhttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/459293.html
<span style="color: rgb(55, 64, 78); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I got home today from a half-day writing workshop, and I thought it would be productive if I cleared off the pile of books by my bed, but the top</span><span style="color: rgb(55, 64, 78); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">book was Jay Lake&#39;s PROCESS OF WRITING that I&#39;d bought at When Words Co</span><span style="display: inline; color: rgb(55, 64, 78); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">llide in Calgary. The cover is a picture of Jay walking through shallow flood waters at the Rain Forest Writers&#39; retreat.<br /><img alt="jay-lake-process-of-writing" height="300" src="http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/jimvanpelt/11390144/193605/193605_300.jpg" style="float: right;" title="jay-lake-process-of-writing" width="200" /><br />I&#39;d forgotten that I&#39;d bought the book. I picked it up, processed the cover and what it was and started crying.<br /><br />Damn.<br /><br />I&#39;ve been jumping around in it since. The book is an organized collection of Jay&#39;s thoughts on a variety of writin</span><span style="color: rgb(55, 64, 78); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">g-related subjects that he posted at his blog. Since I&#39;d been a long-time reader of the blog, and I respected Jay a great deal, I know that I&#39;ve read almost all of them, but what I&#39;ve read so far sounds new to me again and helpful. They also sound like Jay.</span><div><br /><span style="display: inline; color: rgb(55, 64, 78); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, &amp;quot;lucida grande&amp;quot;, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">At least for the moment Jay&#39;s voice is alive in my head as it should be. We should all be able to carry on like that--to live on. <br /><br />Jay couldn&#39;t walk on water, despite the cover of his book, but man could he create the illusion that he could.</span></div>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/459293.htmlwritingpublic2http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/459157.htmlThu, 11 Sep 2014 13:02:49 GMTChanges Over Timehttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/459157.html
The yearbook is doing a page about how the school has changed over the years. When I started at FMHS, I was the yearbook advisor, so the yearbook has always had a soft spot in my heart. The current advisor, Mrs. Miller, was one of my editors in the early 80s. A staff member e-mailed me and asked how much I've changed over my teaching career. Here's my reply:<br /><br /> You could ask Mrs. Miller how much I've changed since she was the yearbook editor when I was the advisor. Of course, she's changed some too. You should have her tell you stories about the darkroom in your classroom when we had to develop all of our own pictures.<br /><br /> I guess things in my life have changed a lot since I started teaching here in 1981, although I don't feel too different. <br /><br />• I'm now teaching under my 7th principal, which has been interesting. <br />• When I started teaching, we didn't have the state-mandated testing like we do now, so our year didn't feel like it rotated as much around CSAP, or TCAP, or PARRC.<br />• We didn't have ParentVue, so parents couldn't tell how their students were doing until either parent-teacher conferences or when the report cards came out.<br />• Also, there weren't video cameras watching kids in the hallways.<br />• I remember when all the kids watched MTV for the music videos (and how so many of them were asking for a couple of weeks, "Have you seen Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' yet?")<br />• When I started here, almost no one owned a "personal computer." Also, the following words meant nothing: Netflix, Google, iPod, iPhone, Amazon, Prius, AL-Qaeda, sexting, selfie, texting, Internet, cyberspace, grunge and about a gazillion other words.<br />• If you would have told me in 1981 that Colorado would legalized marijuana, I would have said, "Not in a thousand years." <br />• I was teaching here during some of the most traumatic moments in our recent history: the Challenger disaster, the Columbine shooting, and 9/11, all of which impacted the school.<br />• I remember when many kids carried Walkmans, which were portable cassette players. To them, an iPod or cell phone would be pure science fiction.<br />• I remember when the kids went on strike for a seven-minute passing period.<br />• I've taught under several different bell schedules here, and I was teaching here when FMHS went to "year round" school.<br />• When I started teaching here, I didn't have any children of my own. Now all three of my boys have gone to Fruita. Both Dylan and Sam graduated from here, and my youngest, Teague, is a senior.<br /><br /> What I also think is interesting is what hasn't changed. You've probably heard people say that kids nowadays don't care as much or don't work as hard or aren't as respectful. I absolutely don't believe that is true. If anything, I think today's students have more demands and handle them better. I am so proud that I have spent my entire teaching career at FMHS. It has been wonderful, and it's wonderful because of the marvelous students I've met, and the outstanding educators I've worked with, including the ones who were once my students, like Mrs. Miller.<br /><br /> Good luck with your page.http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/459157.htmlteachingpublic7http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/458953.htmlFri, 29 Aug 2014 18:14:44 GMTReading that Shaped Mehttp://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/458953.html
<xml:namespace ns="livejournal" prefix="lj"><p>My friend, Sara Backer﻿ tagged me with the ten-book meme. The list is the books that &quot;stayed with me.&quot; I compiled the books without really thinking about how they &quot;provided insight about societal injustice as well as compelling characters.&quot;&nbsp; This is the list I came up with:</p><p>1.&nbsp;My Father&rsquo;s Dragon, by Ruth Stiles Gannett.&nbsp; I could have picked several other little kid&rsquo;s books, but I think this one warped me best. A clever protagonist, a plucky baby dragon, and a lot of scary animals.<br />2.&nbsp;The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury. MANY people might put this one on their list. Beautiful language in the service of imaginative, thought-provoking, emotional stories. Bradbury was my introduction to short fiction (although I read &ldquo;The Pit and the Pendulum&rdquo; even earlier).<br />3.&nbsp;The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein. Heinlein&rsquo;s juveniles were the entry-level drug to his important, adult novels like this one.<br />4.&nbsp;Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit), by J.R.R. Tolkien.&nbsp; I lost a week of college classes because someone left a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring on a table in the student union. Poetic language and epic storytelling.<br />5.&nbsp;Mythago Wood, by Robert Holdstock.&nbsp; This one the World Fantasy Award in 1988, so one of those rare books that made the list from after I was 22.&nbsp; James Michener once said that you should read as many of the great books as you can before you are 22, which I have just taken to mean that you are most influenceable when you are young.<br />6.&nbsp;Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig. I think I made three or four false starts on this book that at first I thought was just profound philosophical meanderings before I discovered that it&rsquo;s also a darned good novel about a father&rsquo;s relationship with his son.<br />7.&nbsp;Out of the Silent Planet, by C.S. Lewis. I didn&rsquo;t know it was also religious allegory! I just thought it was great world building that shook my view of humanity.<br />8.&nbsp;Goodbye Mr. Chips, by James Hilton. I read this my first year of teaching, at the back of a class that was doing silent reading.&nbsp; I wept.<br />9.&nbsp;Lincoln&rsquo;s Dreams, by Connie Willis.&nbsp; Willis is a world treasure.&nbsp; She&rsquo;s funny when writing comedy, and tragic when she needs to be.&nbsp; Her work is the best melding of speculative thinking, solid background research, and the human condition that I&rsquo;ve ever read.&nbsp; I could have picked a half-dozen other titles from her.&nbsp; She&rsquo;s awesome.<br />10.&nbsp;I can&rsquo;t name a tenth book because there are twenty more titles that should be in my top ten.&nbsp; How can I get this far without having mentioned Edgar Rice Burroughs, Anne McCaffrey, Ursula Le Guin, Stephen King, David Brin, Kim Stanley Robinson, George R.R. Martin, Zenna Henderson, or James Patrick Kelly?&nbsp; I know that I&rsquo;ll keep revising this post by adding other names.<br />11.&nbsp;Yes, I&rsquo;m an English teacher, and I love to teach Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, The Great Gatsby, A Man for All Seasons, Death of a Salesman, Hamlet, and the many other classics that are a part of the English canon, but they aren&rsquo;t the books that shaped me.&nbsp; They&rsquo;re influential, but I read them too late.&nbsp; My early reading pretwisted me.</p></xml:namespace>http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/458953.htmlbooksreadingpublic0